Disney/Pixar’s Brave, DreamWorks Animation’s Rise of the Guardians, and Disney’s Wreck-It Ralph all received the most nominations—ten each—in the feature categories for the 40th Annual Annie Awards for animation. Close behind are Focus/LAIKA’s ParaNorman and Sony Pictures Animation’s Hotel Transylvania, which earned eight nominations each.

All five are nominated for best animated feature, along with Frankenweenie from Disney; The Pirates! Band of Misfits, from Aaardman Animations and Sony Pictures Animation; and The Rabbi’s Cat from GKIDS.

In direction, two frontrunners—Brave and Guardians—came up short. The directors of ParaNorman (Sam Fell, Chris Butler), Hotel Transylvania (Genndy Tartakovsky), and Wreck-It Ralph (Rick Moore) will face off against the directors of two movies from GKIDS, The Rabbi’s Cat (Johan Sfar, Antoine Delesvaux) and Zarafa (Remi Bezancon, Jean-Christophe Lie).

In the case of Brave, Brenda Chapman was removed as director halfway through the project and replaced by Mark Andrews, though both are credited directors. It is unclear if that contributed to Brave’s omission from the directing category. The pair did, however, get nominated as two of the film’s writers.

Tim Burton was also overlooked in directing, though his Frankenweenie earned five nominations including best animated feature. The film was also chosen as the year's best animated film Monday by the New York Film Critics Circle.

Two of the films nominated for animated short Annies are also Oscar contenders in the same category. They are Maggie Simpson in ‘The Longest Daycare’ from GracieFilms and Paperman from Disney.

Meanwhile some of the movies shortlisted for the visual effects Oscar are nominated in the category for character animation in a live action film. Two teams from Rhythm & Hues—one that animated the Tiger and one that animated the Orangutan in Life of Pi—will compete against teams representing ILM for The Avengers and Sony Pictures Animation and Imageworks for The Amazing Spider-Man. Teams for VFX shortlisted films The Avengers, Spider-Man and John Carter (Cinesite) were nominated for animated effects in a live action production, along with ILM’s work on Battleship.

In television, DWA’ Dragons: Riders of Berk—based on the studio’s How To Train Your Dragon—received 10 nominations, the most for a series. Including its 10 nominations for Rise of the Guardians, and 10 for Berk, DWA projects earned a total of 33 nominations.

Combining its various entities, including Pixar, Disney scored a total of 39 nominations.

Presented by The International Animated Film Society, ASIFA-Hollywood, the 40th Annual Annie Awards will be held February 2 at UCLA’s Royce Hall.

During the evening, Oscar Grillo, Terry Gilliam and Mark Henn will receive Winsor McCay Awards for career achievement; Howard Green will be presented the June Foray Award for charitable impact on animation; and Toon Boom Animation’s Toon Boom Animation Pipeline will be recognized with the Ub Iwerks award for technical advancement.